


between the lines

by jaystrifes



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, Banter, But mostly tattoo parlor, Confessions, F/M, Friendship/Love, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22932220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaystrifes/pseuds/jaystrifes
Summary: After helping Katara and Zuko end their rivalry of three years, Aang thinks it's a little impressive that they get along so well these days.
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Aang/Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Aang/Zuko (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 103





	between the lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [guileheroine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/guileheroine/gifts).



> This is a belated gift for @guileheroine for the 2020 zutaraang valentine's exchange!! I hope you'll forgive me for taking so long - I ended up loving the concept and wanting to build a whole AU around it, but maybe the rest will come along in other drabbles.
> 
> Special thanks to @wildlydeepgay for helping beta this!

A quiet tension hangs in the air between the three of them alone in the _Spirit Oasis_. All is silent except for the whir of the gun and their breathing - Zuko’s just a little quick, Katara’s steady with only a deeper inhale every now and then, Aang’s held too long on the edge of anticipation. The parlor is darker than usual, with the warm overhead lights dimmed after closing and the pastel neon signs on the front windows shut off.

“This is so weird,” Aang whispers. 

He can’t take his eyes away from Katara’s hand, Zuko’s collarbone, the needles at work over the skin between. Something almost like a whimper escapes Zuko. It’s so intimate, Aang almost feels like he shouldn’t be here, even though he asked to be.

Zuko’s slightly wild gaze flicks from the ceiling to where Aang sits on the stool beside the bed. His pupils are wide enough they almost drown out the rings of gold around them. “What, your voyeurism? You’re right, it is pretty weird.”

Aang swats lightly at Zuko’s shoulder. Katara, working on Zuko’s other side, gives him a warning glare.

“If you make me mess up, you lose your watching privileges forever.”

“Hey, it’s my skin,” Zuko says. “If he makes you mess up, he’s losing a lot more than that.”

Katara rolls her eyes, but a smirk teases at her lips. “You are really bad at being threatening.”

Before they can start full-on bickering, Aang says, “Okay, what I was _going_ to say is, it’s weird that you guys finally get along enough for this! In your own, weird way.”

“I think it’s weirder that we get along with you,” Zuko points out. “You let a dog wreck both our shops on the day we met you. Not exactly the best first impression.”

“Well, yeah, but Appa was just a scared stray, and I was just a guy doing my job, and you're the ones who yelled at me. It's a good thing I'm so forgiving. And likeable.”

“And humble, too,” Katara says, a few beats later. She's absorbed in her work, the precise thin strikes of the design she's tattooing along the column of Zuko's neck and down over his shoulder. “Anyways, I guess you're right, in a way. I don't think I ever would have forgiven Zuko if you hadn't convinced me. And spirits know he never would have swallowed his pride enough to apologize without you pushing him.”

“Hey!” Zuko starts to lift his head, and Katara immediately stops him, with a stern, “ _Down_.”

Aang accidentally rolls his chair away in a fit of laughter. “Ahaha, you sound just like me at the shelter! Aww, sounds like someone's been a bad boy, huh Zuko?”

Unintentionally, his voice does something half-flirtatious and half-’baby talk reserved for cute animals.’ Zuko looks absolutely murderous. It’s a little bit hot.

“You are so lucky I'm tied down right now.” Immediately realizing what that sounds like, Zuko backtracks, his face going pink. “I mean, not literally, like, I can't move or Katara will kill me, but otherwise, I would kill you, got it?”

Scooting the chair back to his spot, Aang props his chin up on his hands, leaning on the bed next to Zuko's head. He is the picture of innocence. “You would never. I'm basically your best friend.”

“You’re one to talk, Aang, considering how much you squirmed when I did your tattoo. And Zuko, no killing in my oasis.” 

Wiping the excess ink and blood from her worksite, Katara peels her forearm from Zuko's chest to take a break. She pulls a face at the slickness of sweat between their skin and grabs a towel to pat them both dry.

Aang stands up to get a better view of the finished lineart while she cleans the needles. “This is gonna look so cool! I mean, it already looks cool, but it’ll be even cooler. You’re doing amazing.”

“I know.” Katara glances back from the sink with a warming smile as she pours out the cup of discolored water. “But thank you.”

“And you too,” Aang says, poking Zuko’s chest a safe distance away from the design. “How are you holding up?”

“Barely even feel it.”

Katara returns with two cups of water. She sets one on the tray and hands the other to Zuko. “That’s good, tough guy, because the next part is going to hurt more.”

Zuko cringes when he sits up to drink, and Aang helpfully brushes back the strands of hair that have fallen loose around his face from his top-knot. It’s not like he enjoys seeing his friend in pain, that would be weird, and mean. If he’s too invested, it’s not about the inviting tension along Zuko’s shoulders or the long stretch of his neck with his head tipped back. It is definitely, one-hundred percent just about the karmic irony and nothing else.

“You did pick a really complicated design, and you were sooo positive it was a good idea,” Aang says. “You should have gone for something simple, like me.”

As if Zuko hasn’t seen it plenty of times already, he turns up his forearm to show off Katara’s geometric work from a few months ago, four elemental symbols linked by a thin line and surrounded with spirals of dots and tiny arrows. He’d given her only a basic concept to go off of, letting her artistic intuition form the actual result. It differs from and yet complements his traditional Air Nomad tattoos (uncommon these days, but a point of pride for him nonetheless).

Zuko, on the other hand, drew his own art and inevitably clashed with Katara when it came to modifying it. “It _is_ a good idea,” he insists. “It’s symbolic. Anyways, you got a head start. You’ve had those since you were twelve.”

“What, it’s a competition now?” Katara chimes in. She’s finished swapping out the needles and the inks she needs to add color to the design, and has her gun at the ready again. “Because I’m pretty sure I have you both beat, as far as numbers go.”

“How many do you have, anyways?” Zuko asks as he lies down, like he can stall for time by distracting her.

Katara smiles sweetly and shows no mercy, setting the needles to skin and making Zuko clench his jaw. “Nine, if you count every whole design as one.”

Without thinking about it, Aang offers his hand, and doesn’t mind when Zuko’s nails dig in hard enough to redden the skin. “Wait, nine?” He starts counting. “The one on your back, three on the one arm, one on the other, one on your wrist, one on your ankle… That’s only seven.”

“You haven’t seen all of them.”

“What do you -” Realization hits him and Aang’s face burns. “Oh.”

“Yet,” Katara adds, her eyes glimmering with amusement in a sideways glance.

“I’ve seen eight,” Zuko mumbles, just a little bit smug.

“Hang on, yet?” Aang repeats belatedly, then snaps his attention to Zuko. “ _Eight_?”

Katara offers no clarification, only her lovely ringing laugh. Aang opens his mouth and closes it again, totally unsure of what to say. They lapse into quiet, punctuated only by Zuko’s occasional sharp breaths.

Aang finds himself studying Katara’s tattoos as if they aren’t already ingrained in his mind. They’re what drew him to her, after the whole fiasco with Appa, what made him dare return to the shop even when it seemed like she couldn’t stand him. The first thing he got her to talk to him about.

The most visible are on her left hand, two bands for each joint of her fingers except for the bare pinky and thumb. They match the sleeve that covers her forearm, the bands there joined with detailed lines and patterns, repetitive stick-like Y’s marking the ends. Katara told him their story early on, the story of the sea goddess Sedna and her cruel father, and gave Aang something close to a sympathetic smile when he looked sick.

Then on the opposite wrist, an old stick-and-poke she spruced up when she started working with real equipment: twin circles, a full moon and the sea, untouched and faded compared to the newer star shapes and dotted constellation lines that unite the design now. Another simple design, a conch, marks her right ankle.

On her left shoulder, a considerably more complex geometric layout of her Scorpio chart, animal and symbols included; on her right, a chrysanthemum blooming between interlocking rhombus shapes, a more contained parallel to Zuko’s extravagant peony.

Directly across from the stinging tail, on the inside of her arm and almost reaching her elbow, there are two crescent moons on their sides, curved upwards towards the upside-down triangle, for the alchemy of water. Aang isn’t sure, but if he had to guess, he’d call it a more refined cousin to the one on her wrist.

The last one, he’s only glimpsed a few times, when Katara wears blouses with wide, low collars: flowing wings or maybe waves spread across her shoulderblades.

He imagines the eighth, the ninth, imagines Zuko’s fingers tracing them in the dark. Something that isn’t quite jealousy twists and tangles itself up inside him. Since when has he felt that way about Katara? Or about Zuko?

No, they’re his friends, and possibly more than each other’s friends. The last thing he wants is to misstep and bring their careful balance crashing down. 

The rasp of Zuko’s voice shakes him from his revelation. “You okay? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you keep your mouth shut for so long at a time.”

“Yeah,” Aang says, brushing it off with half a laugh. “It’s just…” 

It’s just that he’s still holding Zuko’s hand even though his own has gone numb, and he’s mesmerized by the sheer self-assurance behind Katara’s eyes, and sometimes he gets the desperate feeling of wishing he’d met them a long time ago, and wanting to know them for a lifetime and more.

As Katara etches the fiery accents of color to the petals sprawling across Zuko’s shoulder, Aang’s chest tightens. For fear that a confession might burst from his lungs, he quickly excuses himself to get some air and heads for the stairs, pretending he doesn’t notice two pairs of eyes break focus on the tattooing just to follow him. 

He pauses only briefly in Zuko’s flower shop on the second floor to greet Yoru, who meows plaintively at him until he yields and scritches at the base of her tail until she falls over. When she’s purring and content, Aang continues upwards, carefully closing the door behind him so the cat can’t follow.

Alone on the roof, he wanders down the outer length of the small greenhouse that occupies most of the space, admires the pretty night-blooming flowers in pinks and purples on the other side. Tucked away in the corner between the low wall and the glass, he sits cross-legged on the ground, closes his eyes and tries to clear his mind. He loses track of both time and his goal. His thoughts continuously circle back to Zuko and Katara, and eventually he gives up on pushing them away, just focuses on allowing them to live in his head without judgment.

Eventually, he hears Katara’s voice calling for him, and briefly Aang thinks he’s reached a previously undiscovered state of enlightenment that involves hallucinations. But when he cracks an eye open, he spots her at the top of the staircase.

“Over here,” he says, and Zuko, who must have been inside the greenhouse looking for him, visibly startles. Aang waves and points to his own shoulder with eyebrows raised in inquiry. Zuko gives him a thumbs-up, lifting his jacket out of the way to show the bandages beneath his tank top. He starts to head for the greenhouse exit, but some gesture from Katara gives him pause. He smiles awkwardly at Aang and makes himself busy tending to the rows of evening-primroses instead.

Katara rounds the corner and joins Aang in the narrow gap between the greenhouse and the wall overlooking the edge of the building. “Why did you leave?” she asks, to the point as ever.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I guess I felt like I was intruding.”

He takes her offered hand. She doesn’t let go after she pulls him to his feet, the press of her thumb soft against his wrist. Her brows knit together like she’s going to say something difficult, so Aang tries to make it easier for her.

“It’s okay, Katara, I know you don’t owe me anything like that. I don’t want to come between you two or…”

Katara shakes her head, and Aang trails off, confused. All he knows is she’s breathtaking in the moonlight, and something like hope flickers in his pulse, enough that he doesn’t reject the thought. She takes his other hand and looks at him imploringly, asking him to understand without words, but he doesn’t.

“You and Zuko,” he tries again, glancing towards the greenhouse, but he can’t find the right way to say it. “It’s okay, really.”

“That was only a few days ago, and we didn’t - neither of us wanted to go any further without you, Aang. _Neither of us_.” Katara breathes in deeply, nervous fingers tangling with his own. “I need to know if that’s how you feel, too.”

“Oh,” Aang says, blinking hard against the sudden sting of tears. “I - yes, I just never thought…”

Katara takes that as her cue to kiss him, hard. Aang’s whole world narrows to that for a moment, the soft strength of her lips and the hand that slides higher up his arm, black ink touching pale blue. When he becomes aware of anything outside of the sweetness of her perfume, his gaze focuses beyond her shoulder and finds Zuko watching them, his blush obvious even in the odd light of the greenhouse. Katara turns to smile and beckon him. Hands clasped tightly still, they wait for Zuko to hastily water the last pots before he joins them.

Zuko mumbles something that sounds like “I hope you told him” as he approaches, but Aang can barely hear over the pounding of his own heartbeat. He reaches for Zuko’s hand. Katara squeezes around to the other side of him to push them together, smirking at her own ingenuity when Zuko practically falls into Aang’s arms. He hesitates for only a moment before he wraps an arm behind Aang’s back and leans into him, breathing him in. Katara joins the embrace, and Aang can’t help but laugh, too, half-dazed with elation. He looks up to the stars and tries not to cry too much into Zuko or Katara’s hair. 

For the first time, it feels like they’re all in exactly the right place in the universe.

The peace lasts for only a few more minutes, before he catches the whispers of Katara and Zuko plotting. Before he can ask, Zuko’s lips brush his neck. A perfect-warm shiver catches Aang so off-guard that he accidentally jostles Zuko’s shoulder with his elbow, making Zuko almost yell. Laughing as they disentangle themselves, Katara grabs each of their hands and tugs them towards the stairs. 

“Where are we going?” Zuko asks before Aang can.

“My place, obviously,” Katara says, mischief dancing in her eyes. “I have some tattoos to show you both.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this and you want to get involved in future zutaraang events, keep up with [this blog](https://zutaraangtastic.tumblr.com/) or [join our server](https://discord.gg/y2fgVVU) for the ship!


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